


Play the Game

by TheBookDinosaur



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts Era, Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 04:23:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6500659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookDinosaur/pseuds/TheBookDinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>December 17th, 1997.</i><br/>Hannah Abbott is taken off the Hogwarts Express, a punishment for her father's helpless, directionless rage at the murder of her mother. Susan Bones can only watch as Hogwarts is twisted into something she can barely comprehend.</p><p>Hannah's interrogators give her a simple choice: tell them everything she knows about Dumbledore's Army, or die.</p><p>In the end, it boils down to this: two girls are best friends. One of them has a shot at survival. The other has lost the game before it's even begun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

September the first dawns just after six, the sky slowly changing from a chilling blackness to a light, pretty grey that reminds Hannah of ashes at a dead fire as she sits at the kitchen table nursing a mug of tea that had gone cold long ago, staring at an empty vase which would probably have contained flowers a year ago. She doesn’t remember how long she’s been sitting here, and she doesn’t keep track of how much longer she stays there, but when Dad makes his unsteady, bleary way down the stairs it’s somehow ten-thirty and she has to be at the platform in half an hour, so it’s probably a good thing that she did her packing last night when she found herself tossing and turning in her suddenly suffocating bed, unable to fall into the blissful oblivion of sleep.

“Morning,” she says, trying not to disturb the air, watching him stumble into the kitchen. He blinks at her and returns the greeting as she pushes a cup of coffee at him over the table. It’s cold, just like her own tea, but from the way that he gulps it down she doesn’t think that he notices.

“So,” he says, voice still rough from sleep as she returns to the exciting task of swirling the dregs of her tea around the bottom of her mug and tries to ignore how suffocating the silence gets. “You’re going back to Hogwarts today.” 

It’s more of a statement than a question, but Hannah still nods in confirmation and mumbles, “Yeah.”

She worries about him. She’s been at home with him ever since Mum’s death – everyone called it an accident, a tragic accident, a spell gone wrong at the market, and Hannah believes them because there’s really no other alternative. Dad’s increasingly frequent drunken ramblings invariably involve Death Eaters, but she’s sure that if the Death Eaters had become powerful enough to be responsible for the death of nineteen people she would have heard about it, cancelled newspaper subscriptions or no. Besides, she can’t imagine that anyone would target their family.

It’s been months, now, and Dad still can’t cook, forgets to sleep, doesn’t wake up when he should. She’s heard him, sometimes, pacing in his room at unearthly hours.

She doesn’t understand why Hogwarts has suddenly become compulsory for every young witch and wizard in Hogwarts, and hates it. Some of her feelings must bleed into her gaze because his stance softens a little and he tells her, “You don’t have to worry about me, Hannah. I’ll be fine.” She nods again, and hopes that he can’t see how false the gesture is, because she can see the red in his eyes and she’d heard his mumbling through the walls last night. “Do you need a lift?” It’s a purely symbolic offer, because he hasn’t been out of the house in months, and she wouldn’t trust him to drive her to King’s Cross if he was actually willing to.

“It’s okay, I can get myself there,” she tells him instead.

“Bye, then,” he says, walking upstairs, empty cup of coffee still in hand. Hannah watches him go and tries to keep her mouth from twisting downwards, tries to remind herself of the emotional turmoil that he’s going through; still, it hurts that he would let her go so easily.

“Bye, Dad,” she calls halfheartedly up the stairs. If he responds, she doesn’t hear it.

When she gets up, a good ten minutes later according to the clock on the wall, both of her knees crack loudly and she winces, and with a wave of her want her trunk comes flying down the stairs. She leaves her house with a _pop_ that is quieter than the crack of her knees, and tries not to feel too guilty about the relief that she feels when she stumbles onto Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, heading back to Hogwarts and away from her dead, empty home.

For a second, the quiet swell of everyone on the platform surrounds her, and the familiarity of having so many people surrounding her is comforting. She takes a deep breath and starts to fight her way towards the scarlet steam engine, and halfway to her destination she hears, “Oh, _Hannah_.” It’s barely another moment before she finds herself with Susan’s arms wrapped around her, and forgets entirely about getting on the train.

The guilt evaporates entirely, and now all she feels is relief as the world narrows down to now, this moment and this contact, hugging her best friend – “Oh, _Susan_ ,” she returns in the same tone, only half sarcastic. “I missed you,” she says into Susan’s shoulder, even though Susan knows that, because it’s something that needs to be said.

“I’m sorry I stopped writing,” Susan says, and seems to flounder a little. “It’s just, you know –”

“No, I get it,” Hannah tells her, even though it’s a lie and she really, really didn’t get why her best friend stopped writing to her, but she didn’t have an owl of her own to ask what was going on, and her house had been large and empty. Days stretching in front of her without the prospect of letters from her best friend had been almost unbearable.

“I know. I just – I missed you, too.” Susan lets her go, and Hannah has the opportunity to take in her new appearance; hair that had previously reached her lower back was now cut to her jaw, and she was thinner than Hannah remembered. Her eyes had bags under them. “So. Let’s find a compartment, and you can tell me all about your summer.”

In hindsight, she should have noticed something then, while she was still on the platform. She should have seen how people were being so much quieter about their goodbyes and their reunions, and how even the smoke coming from the Hogwarts Express seemed downcast. She should have noticed the dark-robed people who were at the edge of the platform, watching the crowd with varying levels of attention. She should have picked it up immediately, and later she will smack herself for her obliviousness, but she had spent the better part of a year at home, with her father, barely going outside. She’d let her Daily Prophet subscription expire after barely a month and allowed Dad’s subscription to the local newspaper run out as well, and even if she had known what was going on, all of her attention had been fixed on Susan.

So she doesn’t see any of the signs that are so obvious on the platform, and she doesn’t observe the people watching them as they board the train and find a compartment. She doesn’t even notice that anything’s wrong until her train ride is interrupted, just under an hour into the trip.

“What’s happening here,” someone says, obviously bored, slamming open the compartment door and ignoring the screech of protest that comes from the hinges. It’s not a question, and Susan seems to expect this, only looking up while Hannah almost bounces off her seat with the shock.

“Nothing,” she says. “We’re catching up.” Hannah can only sit and watch, mouth open in shock, as one of the adults – a thin man with blank eyes and a cruel twist to his mouth – opens their cases and casts a series of spells on them both before he nods at the other man in the door and both of them leave, slamming the door hard enough to make Hannah jump again.

“What – what _was_ that?” she asks in disbelief. “What – Susan, _what_? What just happened?” 

“You really don’t know anything that’s going on,” Susan says, looking at Hannah with the oddest look on her face – it’s only six years of friendship which allow Hannah to decipher a sort of jealousy there, like Susan envies her ignorance. _Ignorance is bliss_ , she remembers, and that expression on Susan’s face is the first thing that tells her she needs to be afraid.

“No, I don’t – Susan, who were they?” she asks, her voice almost cracking.

“Death Eaters,” Susan tells her, and there is probably nothing on earth which would have shocked Hannah more. “Hannah, they’ve taken over Hogwarts.”

She’s heard about You-Know-Who, _Voldemort_ , through whispers and stories and the DA the year before last, but – nobody had taken those rumours seriously, people had gone to serious lengths to discredit them, and the death of the DA last year had made everybody think that it had always been more about taking their education into their own hands rather than _fighting a war_. The possibility of You-Know-Who seemed absurd, but Susan looks deathly serious, and abruptly Hannah wonders how much truth was in her dad’s constant suspicions. 

Then she realises that the pause between them has gone on for far too until long, and Hannah finally asks in a tiny voice, “What about Dumbledore?” Absently, she realises that she’s shrinking into herself, and also that it really won’t do her any good.

Susan regards her with sad eyes. “Hannah, you really should have kept up the Daily Prophet subscription,” she says, and her voice is so gentle that Hannah knows what comes next will be bad.

“No,” she murmurs, trying to keep it at bay, but Susan keeps talking.

“Dumbledore’s dead, Hannah. He – _fell_ ,” she says in a tone that makes it abundantly clear that it wasn’t an accident, “off the Astronomy Tower. There was a funeral. Snape’s the Headmaster now. They’ve got the Prophet under their control, too, so nobody’s actually said it out loud, but – everyone knows that Hogwarts is under You-Know-Who’s control now.” She pauses for a moment to let this sink in, and when the horrified expression on Hannah’s doesn’t lift, she asks, “Why did you think they made it compulsory for everyone to come back?”

“Is this why you stopped writing me?” Hannah asks, and her voice is still small. She knows that the news she’s been given should be rocking her world, and yet all she can focus on is that maybe Susan actually had a reason for stopping her letters. Susan stops her explanation with a look of horror dawning on her face.

“Hannah, I’m so sorry,” she says. “I’m so – I thought you knew what was happening. I never wanted you to think – oh _no_ , Hannah, what did you think of me?”

Hannah practically tosses herself at her best friend at this pronouncement. “I thought you forgot about me,” she says into Susan’s robes. “I thought – I don’t know. I thought I said something wrong in one of my replies, maybe.” A summer of worrying was all for nothing, she thought giddily, a stupidly large smile on her face, and she was absurdly happy about it.

“I would never,” Susan says fervently, and Hannah can feel Susan’s hands on her back. “I was just scared they would grab a letter and a quote and twist it out of context, Hannah, that’s all. I’m sorry I didn’t keep writing. I should have.”

“No, you’re right,” Hannah said, and she can’t even muster up anger at Susan. She hardly ever can. “It sounds – it sounds like the entire country’s under his control. It was smart of you not to give them anything to use against you. God knows you have the motive to do something like that.” Susan sags against her a little, and the two of them pull away from each other.

“It pretty much is,” Susan says. “The country, I mean. He’s been killing Muggles – I suppose you didn’t read Muggle newspapers either?” Her hand finds Hannah’s as Hannah shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” Susan says. “You’re going to have to go through a reality check really quickly.” Hannah nods, but Susan is her best friend and Susan didn’t forget about her and Susan’s hand is in hers, and that is most of what she can focus on.

* * *

Hannah quickly finds that the horror of having Death Eaters as train-supervisors wears off quickly when they try to step out of the compartment only to get glared back in, the trolley lady fails to appear at their cabin door, and the Death Eaters themselves conduct spot checks, popping their heads in compartments at the most inconvenient times.

“ _Honestly_ ,” Hannah hisses as their compartment door closes for the eighth time and Hogsmeade station mercifully comes into view. “Don’t they have _anything_ better to do than terrorise seventeen-year-olds? We’re not going to offer them much of a fight.”

“Shh,” Susan tells her, and doesn’t need to say any more; Hannah closes her mouth and grinds her teeth together unhappily. She can almost taste copper and salt in her mouth as she bites the inside of her cheek, but she doesn’t pierce the skin and instead her cheek just grows sore.

“I’m sorry,” she sighs, looking over at Susan and seeing how tense she is, how she’s constantly looking around as though she expects another spot check, or for watchers and eavesdroppers to jump out of the wall. “Susan, I’m sorry. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“You do that,” Susan says, smiling a little – it’s pale and thin and fades almost immediately, and Hannah wouldn’t even have counted it as a smile if they were still young and happy and still in third year or something, but it’s the closest that she’s come since they’ve boarded the train, so Hannah counts it as a win.

* * *

“Attention, students,” Professor – no, _Headmaster_ Snape says, standing behind the podium and raising his arms for silence; he looks like an awkwardly winged crow, Hannah thinks as spitefully as she can. Professor Dumbledore had always allowed them to eat before making lengthy speeches, but it appears as though Snape is determined to be as different from his predecessor as possible.

She listens idly as Snape introduces the new Hogwarts prefect system, which is comprised almost solely of Slytherins, with the occasional Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff for diversity purposes, and the two new teachers, and tells them that Muggle Studies and the Dark Arts are going to be compulsory subjects for all students. It’s a testament to how scared the Hall is that the most resistance this announcement meets is grumbling, predictably from the Gryffindor table. This is ignored by the rest of the Hall, including the staff table, although Hannah thinks she can see McGonagall’s hands tightening around her cutlery.

“A reminder,” Snape says drily, to wrap up his speech, “that mealtimes are to be spent in silence.” He sits down in a seat that looks wrong behind him, and when Hannah looks around everyone is picking silently at their food.

The Sorting Feast passes in a haze of sullen silence, and when Hannah looks up at the staff table, Professor Sprout is looking down at her food with tight lips and a pale face. The rest of the professors look similarly strained, and she averts her gaze, feeling like it’s wrong to see her Professors as anything other than perfectly put together, as though by seeing them so tense she’s intruding on a private moment, which is ridiculous because this is the Sorting Feast and they’re in the middle of the Great Hall.

“You should eat,” Ernie says gently from her right, and she jumps at the noise, even though it was anything but loud. He watches her with kind eyes.

“I – yeah,” Hannah says, and mechanically shoves a forkful of something she doesn’t register into her mouth. “I’m not that hungry,” she says quietly, and it’s true, her appetite is gone even though the last thing she ate was breakfast that morning, which had consisted of an overly strong cup of tea nursed for several hours. Ernie squeezes her arm, and she gives him a shaky smile.

“Are you okay?” Susan asks quietly once they’ve found their way back to their dorm room, leaving most of their housemates in the common room to talk freely for the first time since getting back.

“No,” Hannah says, refusing to be ashamed of it. “Dad – he kept getting drunk,” she starts, after a silence. Susan comes to sit next to her, a line of warmth against Hannah’s right side. “He kept saying that it was Death Eaters that – caused the _accident_.”

“What did you think?” Susan asks, still quiet, still pressed against Susan’s side. Hannah shrugs.

“I thought – I – they all said it was an accident,” she says weakly. She hates herself a little bit for believing them, for being so _naïve_. “Everyone. Except him. Everyone said it was an accident.” She can hear them now, crowding in her house after the funeral, dressed in black and squeezing her hand as they murmur about _tragic accidents_. They’d given her tea. She’d gotten through most of it, but there were still some boxes at the back of the kitchen cupboard. 

“Did you ever find out any more?” Susan asked. She has Hannah’s hand in both of hers, drawing absent patterns on the skin of her palm because she knows that physical contact helps Hannah.

“No,” Hannah says. Dad’s words have crawled into her head now – _no spells they use in markets would clash so violently_ , he’d said, _nothing but a planned destruction spell could’ve caused that kind of damage_ – and she wonders whether any of them hold any truth. She wonders whether her perpetually calming, disbelieving hums which she’d tried to use to calm him into quiet had made him worse.

“We should go to sleep,” Susan says. “Lessons start tomorrow.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep,” Hannah says bleakly. Dad’s voice in her head says _they said the spell reaction created force but there were burns on her body_. She’d dismissed him so easily, drunk and crazy with grief. 

Megan slips into the dorms then, looking small and alone without Sally-Anne or Sophie, who’d been her constant companions before both of their families had left England for places unknown but almost certainly safer. She takes one look at Hannah and Susan and comes forward to hug them both, as much for her own benefit as theirs. “I’m scared,” she says into the hug, the words coming out fast and rushed.

“Me too,” Hannah says, and Susan nods.


	2. Chapter 2

When Hannah blinks herself into wakefulness, she has one perfect moment of quiet, watching the sunlight creep into through the window and brighten the room. They’d pushed their beds together last night, and Susan and Megan are so close that she can hear their quiet, sleepy breathing.

Susan’s alarm goes off, then, breaking the silence with a loud tapping noise, and Hannah can only compare the sick feeling in her stomach to being dragged downwards as she remembers what, exactly, she’d been told yesterday, and what today has in store for her. Megan echoes her feelings by shifting onto her back and groaning at the ceiling. “I don’t _want to_ ,” she mutters.

“We still have half an hour,” Hannah agrees, trying to pull the blankets up; Susan decides to get out of bed then, and takes all the blankets with her.

“We got our timetables,” she notes quietly, and Hannah sits up with a frown, ready to point out that timetables were only handed out during breakfast, but Susan forestalls her by waving a piece of paper at her and then gesturing at the bedside table they’d shoved towards the wall when they’d pushed their beds together.

“Huh,” Hannah says, getting out of bed to get her timetable and Susan’s and study the two, noting with satisfaction that they have all their classes together again.

“Professor Sprout is a _treasure_ ,” Megan says fervently, apparently deciding that this was worth getting out of bed for; one side of her face is red and creased from where it was smushed into her pillow all night. “This is her way of saying we don’t have to go to breakfast, isn’t it?” Susan’s in the middle of changing, but Hannah can tell even when she’s hopping on one foot that this makes her happy.

“Perfect,” she agrees.

When they get to the kitchen, it seems as though every other Hufflepuff has interpreted Professor Sprout’s actions in the same way as Megan, because the table in the kitchen is crowded with Hufflepuffs and plates of various breakfast foods. The first years are looking around in awe, and a couple of them have engaged the house-elves in conversation. If they’d been in the Great Hall, with a sun-rising ceiling above them and chatter from other tables surrounding them, this would have been normal, Hannah thinks a little bitterly.

“I’m so glad we’re near the kitchens,” Megan says fervently, and Hannah nods in agreement because this is probably the most grateful for the kitchens that she’s ever been, even taking into account O.W.L week in Fifth Year.

“Don’t you think they’re going to be angry, though?” Susan asks worriedly even as Wayne moves over for her to take a place at the table. “I mean, the entirety of Hufflepuff house is kind of boycotting breakfast.”

“If we were Gryffindor they’d probably be mad,” Wayne says. “They’d take it as some kind of revolt, right? But we’re Hufflepuffs, so we won’t mean anything by it.”

“I hope that’s the case,” Ernie says. “But let’s not spoil the morning by talking about getting in trouble. Or the new staff,” he adds, and even though he was the only Hufflepuff to retain his prefect status in the house Hannah realises that he isn’t wearing his prefect badge.

Susan’s mouth is twisted down, and Hannah tries to nudge her gently, but judging from the cross look Wayne shoots her from Susan’s other side she was more forceful than she meant to be. “It’s okay,” she murmurs softly. “It’s not like they’ll know where the kitchens are unless they were Hufflepuffs when they were here themselves.” Susan’s smile flitters on and off her face so quickly that Hannah can’t be sure that it was ever there. “Susan, it’s okay,” Hannah says, a little more forcefully, hating the way Susan’s shoulders slope downwards.

“We’ve the Dark Arts first,” she says, standing up and tugging on Hannah’s robes, “with the new teacher, so we’d better hurry if we don’t want to end up on her bad side.”

“His bad side. She teaches Muggle Studies and he teaches the Dark Arts,” Ernie says, wiping his mouth and standing up. Megan and Wayne begin to stand up as well, marking the end of the Hufflepuff breakfast, and the five of them make their way through the castle. There’s a pain in Hannah’s chest when she looks around and can only see four other people, when before there would have been twice that number – Sally-Anne and Sophie with Megan, Justin with Wayne and Zacharius with Ernie – and there’s something a little pathetic about their pared-down group.

“Well?” Carrow – Hannah refuses on principle to call him Professor Carrow in her head where he can’t hear her – says as he stalks up to the classroom, seven minutes late according to Anthony Goldstein, who is timing it gleefully. He’s clearly out of breath, probably from having to climb an extra four flights of steps when the staircase outside the Great Hall performed its daily east-to-west movement. “Get in there, then.” He glares at them all as they file in, daring them to laugh, and none of them do.

The classroom that they walk into is one of the barest that Hannah has seen. Even McGonagall’s classroom has more personality than this, and whatever one might say about Umbridge, the kittens had been adorable. Even Snape’s classroom last year had been more decorated than this room, which contains only the requisite tables, chairs, and blackboard.

“Nobody warned him about the east-to-west rotation,” Hannah hears Michael Corner whisper happily into Ernie’s ear as the two of them sit down next to each other, confirming her prediction. “I was off the stairs when it happened, and it was _glorious_. I think I might have broken something, holding in the laughter.” Ernie coughs out a laugh of his own, and Hannah smiles widely at the book in her arms, but when she turns to look at Susan she finds her friend staring at Carrow with a scared, hunted look on her face that Hannah hates.

“Susan, hey,” she tries, but Carrow slams the door to the classroom shut and makes his way up to the front, and Hannah takes that as her cue to shut up.

“The Dark Arts,” he says, grinning at them, and somewhere off to her right Hannah can hear someone mumble “what an inspired opening” and she wants to slap her hand over their mouth but she also wants to laugh. Carrow shoots a glare in the general direction of the whisper and opens his mouth to continue. There’s something in his mouth, staining his teeth, and Hannah looks at a fixed point somewhere beside his head because she can’t bear to meet his eyes. “Your education this far has focused on all the wrong areas,” he continues. “From now on, the changes in the curriculum mean that your learning will be focused on the curses that you need. So,” he says, turning to the blackboard and starting to write; rather fittingly, the chalk screeches loudly as he drags it across the board, and the class winces in unison.

When Carrow steps away from the board with a dramatic flourish, the white marks read _The Triad Curses_. Beneath the large headings are the smaller incantations _crucio, imperio_ , and _avada kedavra_.

Carrow watches the reactions of the class carefully; some students gasp, some actually flinch away from the board as though that’s going to help them, and some of them look to one another with wide eyes and murmur concern to each other. Hannah only has eyes for Susan, and the way her shoulders have gone stiff and rigid.

“Susan,” she whispers, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. “ _Susan_.”

Susan looks at her with wide eyes, and Hannah doesn’t know what to say.

* * *

Hannah doesn’t know how Alecto Carrow can be worse than her brother, worse than the feeling of dirt on her skin she needs to scrub away after learning the wand movements of a spell to _torture somebody_ , but it ends up being a very close thing.

She spends the entire lesson stalking back and forth across the classroom like it’s impossible for her to stay still, telling them what Hannah knows to be blatant lies - how Muggles are dirty, and stupid, and no better than animals really, how they are no better than dirt. She uses words that Hannah has never even heard before and really doesn’t want to hear again (but definitely will, given that this woman is her teacher for _the rest of the year_ ), and then she writes a timeline on the blackboard and tells them that they will be moving chronologically through history, covering all the brutalities that Muggles have committed through the ages.

Susan starts off the lesson, like most of the class, looking as though she wants to be sick, but by the end of the lesson Hannah can see that her shoulders are rigid again and her face is carefully, carefully blank and composed. Her hands are folded neatly in front of her.

“We’ll start with the medieval witch hunts tomorrow,” Carrow says when the lesson ends, and under her sharp gaze everybody tries their best not to appear to eager to leave the classroom.

“I need to start a history club,” Morag MacDougal says dismally when they’re down the corridor, looking almost personally betrayed at how the new curriculum is butchering history. Hannah almost never paid attention during History of Magic but even she knows that the Muggle-wizard conflict had been thoroughly two-sided.

“Don’t,” someone advises her, “that wouldn’t be smart.”

“Susan, are you okay?” Hannah asks, trying not to sound as anxious as she feels. Susan smiles at her but it’s false and empty.

“I’m fine,” she says, taking Hannah’s arm. “We’d better go, though, I don’t want to be late for Herbology.”

* * *

By the time the first week of lessons ends, Hannah is ready to hit something. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so helpless and she _hates_ it. She doesn’t know how to describe it to anyone without sounding a little gone in the head, but it’s like someone has taken something out of her and there’s a hole in her chest that she doesn’t know what to do with. It makes it difficult to breathe, and this is only the _first week_ of classes.

“I hate this,” she says instead, looking up from her essay. “Hogwarts isn’t the same.”

“I know,” Susan says, and she doesn’t say that it’s going to get better because everybody knows that it probably won’t.

“I’m scared that I’m going to get used to it,” Megan says, her voice small. “Imagine getting used to this. I don’t want to. I -” she cuts herself off, looking frustrated, and Hannah shouldn’t be glad of it but she’s not the only one who can’t quite vocalise her thoughts and that comforts her more than in should.

Everybody looks up when the door to the Common Room opens and Neville steps through, looking a little embarrassed at the attention. When he sees them he comes over, and pulls out a chair to sit down.

“What?” he asks self-consciously when they continue to start.

“It’s against the rules to go into other common rooms,” Megan says. He shrugs, and Hannah marvels at this quiet daring.

“Yeah, I know, I just wanted to tell you - um.” He pauses, fidgeting; he doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. “There isn’t an easy way to say this. I want to restart the DA.” His voice is quiet, but all of them look around to see whether anyone who could have heard him.

“Um,” Hannah says, a little bit dumbstruck.

“I’m not expecting you to make up your minds right away,” Neville adds hastily. “It’s a big decision, I get that. Just think about it, yeah?”

“We’ve only just finished the first week of classes,” Hannah says. “The _first week_.”

“Everyone knows it’s not going to get any better,” he says, and Hannah turns her face away because the hole in her chest expands a little bit at those words and she thinks she might choke on its nothingness. She hadn’t realised she was still hoping and it stings.

“I’ll do it,” Megan says, at the same time Susan says, “I can’t.”

They all turn to look at her, and she shrugs. “I’m sorry. I can’t - I can’t afford to make waves, alright? Not this year.” Her shoulders curve in on themselves.

“Okay,” Neville says, and the disappointment on his face kind of cancels out the acceptance. “I mean, I’m not going to force you. Just don’t tell anyone, please.” Hannah nods and she can see Susan doing the same. “Can you tell me where the boys are?” he asks.

“Their dorm, probably,” Hannah says, pointing at the door for him. Neville nods and leaves them. Megan looks at Susan, biting her lip, and then returns to her essay, holding her quill a little bit too tightly.

“Just spit it out,” Susan says tiredly, after a few seconds of Hannah staring at her and debating whether or not to start this in the middle of the Common Room.

“Couldn’t you have at least thought about it?” Hannah asks, trying to keep her voice quiet and level. “I mean - he did say he didn’t need us to make a decision now -”

“My mind was made up,” Susan says with a shrug. “Yours doesn’t have to be -”

“Don’t be stupid, I wouldn’t join without you -”

“I just can’t, okay?” Susan says, and her voice is level but also holds a trace of tears. The scratch of Megan’s quill on parchment becomes more pronounced as she emphatically stays out of it, and Hannah lets the issue go.

“Okay,” she says quietly.

* * *

Lessons are a constant whirlwind of a vague, terrified feeling that seeps into their lives and turns them grey. Hannah didn’t know that it was possible to suck the life out of a place and turn it into a school of living dead people, but the Death Eaters have done an admirable job of it.

Everybody is supposed to enforce rigid rules - no speaking outside of lessons, no fraternising with other houses, no talking back to any of the professors or newly-appointed prefects. It makes it easier to live, to empty your eyes and follow all the rules and become accustomed to everything in Hogwarts that nobody should have to grow accustomed to. Susan walks on that path, and Hannah calls and calls and calls but her best friend barely hears her anymore.

Professor Sprout lets them into Greenhouse Six where the plants are at their most powerful, and tries to distract them from everything by letting them get dirt underneath their fingernails, letting them breathe in the smell of things growing. It becomes a favourite haunt of many students in between lessons and sleep, and the plants begin to look as though they have never been so well cared for.

“Megan?” Susan asks one lesson when they are trying to harvest dittany from particularly protective vines, and Hannah turns around to see Susan frowning in the general direction of Megan’s pocket.

“Neville has another detention tonight,” she says defensively. “It’s always better to have something on hand for that. Not that either of you would know,” she says, and Susan has the decency to look down.

“Why?” Hannah asks suspiciously. “What happens in detention?” _What happens in detention that you need the essence of dittany for it,_ is the real question, and Megan shakes her head.

“He doesn’t tell us, none of them tell, but it’s never good.”

“Good, girls,” Professor Sprout says approvingly as she comes over. “Well. Usually a plant this size only yields around six vials,” she says, taking six vials from the row on the workbench.

“Thank you, Professor,” Megan says with an almost desperate sincerity. Professor Sprout nods, looking at the two leftover vials on the bench and then pointedly turning away.

* * *

“Susan, are you really not going to rejoin the DA?” Hannah asks one night, fidgeting as they prepare for bed in the dormitory. Megan has been talking to them less and less since the two of them refused Neville, and tonight is one of those nights where she hasn’t come back in time for the curfew, nights which are steadily increasing in frequency. She regrets raising the subject as soon as the words leave her mouth, because most of the time they spend in the dormitory is soft, getting up or going to sleep, full of gentle movements, and Susan stiffens and becomes sharp edges as soon as Hannah mentions the DA.

“Yes,” she says shortly, and continues to search for something in her trunk.

“So that’s it?” Hannah demands, even though she had promised herself that she’d just ask the question and sow the seeds of doubt rather than confront Susan. “You’re just going to let them win?”

“I’m _not making waves_ ,” Susan snaps, standing up with her fists clenched by her side.

“There’s _not making waves_ ,” Hannah says, mimicking her tone, “and then there’s just being a _coward_.” Susan falls silent at this, looking down at the floor, and Hannah pushes on. “Would your family be proud of you now?” she asks, and feels a sick kind of glee when Susan looks up at her with hurt in her eyes, loves that she’s finally gotten through to her. “You, the last Bones. You, sitting there and letting them _win_.”

“Don’t you _dare_ bring my family into this, don’t you –” Susan says in a voice that is low and awful and more impassioned than she’s been in a long time. She puts a hand over her mouth, presses her lips together, and Hannah is already feeling the hot guilt pushing its unwelcome way through her body.

It feels like something’s been shattered - the dormitory is almost suffocating in its silence, and when the lights are switched off and Hannah and Susan get into their beds, which are still pushed together from that first night, it is the first time that she falls asleep without being able to feel Susan’s gentle warmth on her left side.


	3. Chapter 3

When all is said and done, it only takes Hannah a day without Susan before she gives in.

Before, maybe, when there were more people to surround herself with and people were more willing to spend their time thinking about petty fights, she could have held out longer, kept herself estranged for longer and held her petty grudge longer, but maybe that’s not realistic either. Maybe it’s something she says to herself to glorify the good old days, or maybe she’s simply wiser after spending a year away from all her friends and realising that is something she never wants to repeat. She has never liked fighting, and fighting Susan is perhaps the worst kind of fighting she can think of.

Whatever the reason is – and Hannah suspects it’s a mixture of many reasons; everything is more complicated than it seems – it’s only the next night that Hannah pulls open Susan’s curtain to find that she’s not there, and then have Susan come out of the bathroom biting her lip and twisting her hands together, her mouth shaping silent words like she’s been rehearsing them.

They look at each other, and they don’t even need to say anything, they know each other that well. They do anyway, though, because this is something that needs to be said.

“I’m sorry,” they say, voices tumbling over one another like always, almost simultaneous but not quite.

“I shouldn’t have reacted so strongly –”

“It’s not your fault,” Hannah says earnestly. “I _wanted_ you to react, I said the most hurtful thing I could just to get a reaction out of you because you’re so walled up and I _hate_ that, but it was childish and wrong –”

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Susan says. “It’s an unhealthy way to cope –”

They both fall silent, and then hug each other – awkwardly, at first, and then tighter because neither of them want to lose their best friend to some small squall while the world turns into a hurricane around them.

* * *

Alecto Carrow teaches them all about the witch-hunts, with so many incorrect facts and biased quotes thrown into the mix that she may as well be telling them some sick, twisted fairytale. For homework, she assigns them tasks which invariably force them to talk about muggleborns, and how inferior they are; she returns their essays with the word ‘muggleborn’ crossed out and _Mudblood_ written firmly next to it.

“This is a warning to you all,” she says when she hands the essays back. “Muggleborn is an inaccurate term. They’re the ones who stole magic that rightfully belongs to us, and you will call them mudbloods.” She uses the word ‘they,’ but her brother has already started to encourage the word ‘it.’

The two of them, both Carrows, spend their lessons looking around the class with a hand on their wand like they want a student to stand up to them for once so that they can show everyone what they’re capable of, and seem almost disappointed when nobody rises to the bait. Then the disappointment gives way to contempt, and Hannah can taste the word _cowards_ in the air.

“It’s between the devil and the deep blue sea,” Susan says one night. “If we fight back, they respect us more but punish us worse. If we don’t fight back, they think we’re cowards but leave us alone.”

“That’s not actually the devil and the sea,” Hannah points out. “Why on earth would we want their respect? It wouldn’t be a very difficult choice, if it was just those factors.”

“If it was just those factors,” Susan repeats on a sigh, and Hannah turns her head to the side as she determinedly doesn’t bring up Neville, or the newly resurrected Dumbledore’s Army.

Small pieces of parchment start to appear on their bedside tables in the morning, tiny handwritten booklets with information about what was actually going on outside of Hogwarts - people who had been listed as missing, people who had been taken by the Death Eaters, addresses that had been attacked. The handwriting was irregular, probably in an attempt to hide the identity of anyone involved, but down the bottom there was a defiantly bold **DA**. It only takes about two issues before the flow of information is so much that it ends up spilling over three pages - eyewitness reports, conflicting information, multiple versions of the same stories. Hannah opens her mouth, once, to ask Susan about the DA, whether she’d still make the same choice, but in the end she closes her mouth again, valuing her friend too much to start another argument.

Eventually, of course, someone reports the pages to the Carrows - and Hannah’s sort of surprised that it took almost a week - and the two of them pin up all the copies they can find in the Great Hall with red ink splashed over the pages, words like _lies_ and _dangerous untruths_ covering the careful work of the parchment. The garish red stains shape the word _traitors_ over the DA at the bottom of each page. They threaten to practice one of the Triad Curses on anyone who is found carrying it around, and offer an amnesty to anyone who helps them find the perpetrators.

Hannah can’t help feeling like the parchments, simply named _Current Affairs_ , are just adding tinder to a pile of wood, and something’s going to make everything go up in flames.

* * *

Hannah hadn’t noticed at first, but as the weeks of term went by the constant worry had started to get to her, and her sleep had grown more fragmented, less settled. Often, now, the muffled sound of Susan gasping during a nightmare was enough to bring her to wakefulness.

“It’s just the normal nightmares,” Susan says to her pillow one night when Hannah asks about them, picking at a seam at the edge of the pillowcase. “My family. My aunt. Sometimes Hogwarts.”

“That’s not normal, Susan,” Hannah says, and Susan doesn’t protest as Hannah hugs her. The darkness is still and quiet around them, and there is no moon outside the window. It gives everything a blurred edge as the two of them fall asleep again, makes the whole encounter seem like a dream. The next morning when the light is crisp and bright again, and the things in the room have regained their sharp, clear edges, Hannah isn’t quite sure that it wasn’t a dream until Susan sits down on the bed and runs a hand through her hair.

“I promised I’d owl them every day,” she says, finally. “But then the rules changed, and owls once a week isn’t enough.” Hannah is still standing, a little helpless. “And we can’t say _anything_ important in our letters. I never know half the things I need to know - I don’t even know a quarter of the things I need to know. You saw the last one I got.”

Her fingers twist into a painful-looking knot as Hannah recalls the last letter Susan had received from her parents - _All’s well at home. It’s been very quiet so far. Try to keep up with your studies! With all our love, Mum and Dad._ At the time, Hannah had just been envious that Susan had even gotten a letter back, because her own father hadn’t even made that effort. The last sentence, particularly, had struck a nerve with her, because when was the last time her father had emerged from his cloud of grief enough to tell her that he loved her? Even worse, maybe, when was the last time she hadn’t been annoyed at him, had been gentle enough to tell him that she loved him? Had she even signed off her last letter with her love, or had she just scribbled her name on the parchment, quick and too hurried?

“If they weren’t alright you’d have heard about it,” Hannah says, shaking herself, her tone infused with more certainty than she feels. “They would have found some way to tell you, or signal it. Or you would have heard something from _Current Affairs_ , even.”

“No news is good news, right?” Susan asks with a tired sort of resignation. Her hands are still knotted together, knuckles white from their tight grip, and Hannah reaches down to untangle her friend’s fingers as gently as possible.

“No news is good news,” Hannah echoes, and hooks one arm in Susan’s to take her to breakfast.

The kitchen is buzzing with noise when they get there, unexpectedly loud. Hannah can hear voices repeating the word _assembly_ , and sits down next to Megan in the hopes that she’ll explain, or at least say something explanatory.

“It’s not going to be good,” Megan says, which, while vaguely explanatory, really doesn’t establish anything that Hannah couldn’t have guessed.

“What’s not going to be good?” Susan asks as she reaches for the toast.

“Didn’t you get the message this morning? The Carrows are calling an _official school assembly_. That’s all anyone knows,” Wayne says, leaning over to offer a small piece of parchment to Susan. Hannah leans over to read the message, which simply reads _Assembly at 8.45 this morning. All students and staff to attend. Tardiness will be punished._

“That -” Hannah starts, and trails off, because she doesn’t know what to say.

“Not promising,” Megan agrees.

“I still reckon it’s about _Current Affairs_ ,” Ernie says, and the table descends back into theorising that sounds almost desperate. Hannah lets the noise wash over her, tries not to think too much, because this is better than waiting in stifling silence for something they all know isn’t going to be good.

When they get to the Great Hall they’ve made sure that they’re five minutes early, but most of the other houses are there already, and the Carrows sneer at them as they make their way to their little-used table. “Ten points off Hufflepuff for tardiness,” Amycus calls out as they seat themselves.

“Each,” Alecto adds, and Hannah can almost hear all the jaws tightening and fists clenching around the table.

Perhaps in the name of fairness, the Carrows take points off everyone who comes in after that, with the obvious exception of the Slytherins. It’s the first time in almost a month that Hannah has seen all four houses together, and she’s almost surprised to note that they all look scared - even the Slytherins, who she’d expected to be gloating, were sitting in silence and staring down at their table.

“Now that everyone’s here,” Amycus Carrow says, standing. What small noise had been in the Hall petered out until everybody was staring at him in a silence so complete that Hannah could barely even hear Susan breathing. “It has recently been brought to our attention,” he starts, glaring around the hall, “that there are some people who resist the change that is sweeping through the wizarding world. There are some people who want us to stay as we were forever, fraternising with filth and expected to hide ourselves from _Muggles_.”

Students shift throughout hall, the wave of nervous movement making a collective swishing noise which Amycus Carrow waits out, casting his eyes over the hall with an altogether satisfied expression on his face. Hannah doesn’t think she’s ever hated anyone so much. She didn’t know it was possible to feel hate like this, building up inside her like it’s a tangible object, causing a pressure that makes her feel like she might crack, one day.

“Headmaster,” Amycus Carrow says, placing an unnecessary emphasis on the word, “will you do the honours?”

Snape stands up, and he’d always been the easiest choice for least favourite teacher, but now she feels all the hate building up inside her direct itself towards him, and it almost scares her, the depth of anger and hatred that she feels.

“Students,” Snape says, “as you all know by now, a contraband gossip column has been making the rounds in the Hogwarts corridors. Teachers have been warning students against reading its lies and dangerous speculations, as well as punishing those involved, but it continues to appear every morning to spread its falsehoods.”

Someone at the Ravenclaw table sneezes, and Alecto Carrow deducts five points from the house. Susan makes a movement that suggests she’s stopping herself from rolling her eyes.

“After some deliberation, we have found the guilty parties who are resisting the glorious change that the Dark Lord is bringing about.”

There is even more nervous shifting throughout the hall, and Snape glares at everyone while he waits it out. Hannah holds her body as still as possible and tries not to glare too obviously; Susan steps onto her foot in warning, so she can’t be doing a very good job.

“When Professor Carrow reads out your names, stand up,” Snape says, and Alecto Carrow rises with a list in her hands and a nasty smile on her face.

“Michael Corner,” she reads, and it sounds like a death sentence. “Seamus Finnigan. Neville Longbottom. Wayne Hopkins.” A murmur of dismay makes its way around the Hufflepuff table as Wayne stands up; everybody knows that he wasn’t involved in the DA two years ago and he wasn’t involved in today’s DA. If anyone, it should have been Megan’s name who was read out, and from the horrified, apologetic look that Megan is sending towards Wayne she knows that. Alecto Carrow continues, reading out name after name. Hannah recognises some of them as being as young as fourth year, and their small, scared faces make her feel like she’s going to shake apart with anger. Susan leans against Hannah, comforting and being comforted.

By the end of the list, there are about fifteen people standing - most of them are from Gryffindor, and some from Ravenclaw, and only two Hufflepuffs were standing up, Wayne and a fifth-year named Laura Madley.

“Be warned,” Snape says, once the list is finished and the hall is silent again. “This is what will happen every week if that paper continues to be distributed.”

He steps back, and Hannah can see the puzzlement she feels reflected on most other faces in the hall. She’s just opened her mouth to whisper-ask Susan _is that all?_ but then the two Carrows step forward, and without any other warning people are screaming in pain, collapsing onto the floor, and this is something that Hannah never, ever needed to see.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Megan says desperately, and Hannah wants to echo the sentiment but she seems to be frozen, eyes wide, and she doesn’t think she can say anything.

People are standing up, clamouring, trying to help their friends, and the quiet has been utterly lost but no matter how much noise that everybody else makes Hannah doesn’t seem to be able to hear them; she’s stuck on one radio channel, the awful noises of pain that come from a human throat, and all she can think is that _this is the fire_.

Later, she will rationalise that it can only have been a few seconds, but when she was in the moment, when the screaming was real and present - it seemed to last forever.

“You are dismissed,” Snape says coolly, once silence has settled over the hall again. “Proceed to your first lessons.” His face is a mask of indifference, and the Carrows are openly gleeful. Hannah tries to take comfort in the sight of the other teachers’ grey, tired faces with barely hidden expressions of horror, but with Wayne just a few seats down, still shivering, it’s difficult.

“Wayne? Oh God, Wayne, I’m so sorry, that should’ve been me, it should’ve been me -” Megan blurts out as soon as they’ve turned the corner. She tucks herself firmly underneath his arm, supporting as much of his weight as she can.

“It’s okay,” Wayne says through chattering teeth. He’s shivering even though it’s not cold, and all of the Hufflepuffs circle the two of them, trying to support them as much as they could. Hannah can hear everyone swarming around everyone else, checking on each other and trying their best to support one another, and it makes her feel warmer, enough that she can turn to face Susan.

“You okay?” Susan asks quietly before Hannah can even open her mouth. She nods, and pulls Susan closer.

“You?” she manages, and her voice doesn’t shake too badly.

The trip to the Charms classroom is hurried, and even though it’s still October Hannah can feel shivers trying to creep through her body.

Flitwick rushes in five minutes late, gives Wayne what may be the most apologetic look Hannah has ever seen on a teacher’s face, and then tells them that the lesson is going to be dedicated to looking through their textbooks and discussing the different uses of wand movements in physical manipulation charms before rushing out the door and leaving them unattended.

“Listen,” Susan says as quiet chatter starts to fill the classroom. “I think we should join.”

“Join?”

“The DA,” Susan says, and the other four Hufflepuffs turn to stare at her with varying expressions of incredulity on their faces. “I mean it,” she insists, holding her ground. “We’ve been trying to keep our heads down and they’re still going to find ways to hurt us. We may as well be doing the things they’re punishing us for.”

“Are you serious?” Ernie asks, his hands fluttering outwards.

“Yes,” Susan says defiantly. “I know Hannah’s been wanting to join.”

“Hm? Oh, oh. Yes” Hannah says numbly, trying to shake herself back into real time. “But, before, they weren’t willing to go - um, this far.” She falters, her mind circling back around to screaming and a shivery, crawling feeling over her skin.

“Susan’s right,” Wayne says, getting the words out through still-chattering teeth. “I haven’t done anything and they tortured me anyway. Keeping our heads down isn’t going to work, they showed us that.”

“The _cruciatus_ ,” Hannah says, her mind feeling a little like it’s travelling through honey, and constantly circling around and around, back to the torture in the Great Hall. “That’s - that’s an _unforgivable_ curse. I don’t - I -”

“I know,” Susan says gently, comforting, her hand moving up and down over Hannah’s upper arm. “I know. That’s why we have to join, see?”

“You’re right, of course,” Ernie says heavily. “I just - yes. You’re right.”

“Yes,” Hannah says, when Susan looks at her expectantly. “Yes, let’s - we can do it. We should do it.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Does joining the DA mean that we have to fight?” Wayne asks when they’re let out from the last lesson of the day. He’s been unusually quiet throughout the day; Megan has been at his side almost constantly, her guilt quite evident in the way that she hovers over him.

“If you don’t want to join the DA,” Ernie says, with more gentleness in his tone than Hannah had thought he was capable of, “you know you don’t have to.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Megan says. “There are some of us who don’t.”

“I do want to join,” Wayne says, and adds an, “I think,” after a brief pause.

“We should sleep on it,” Ernie says. “This morning, we were angry and scared and confused. And that’s not the best climate to make decisions in. One more day won’t make much of a difference.”

“Well, now that you’ve _said_ that –” Susan starts, and the five of them all snort with laughter, the sound echoing around the Common Room and attracting a few startled glances from the other years. Hannah’s smile drops at that, and she hates that laughter – even quiet half-laughter, like this had been – has become such an unfamiliar sound in their own Common Room, the place where so many of her happy memories have formed.

“I want to,” Wayne says, his tone more determined. “I mean, this morning was proof that the Carrows aren’t exactly going to take the time to differentiate between the neutral people and the ones working against them –”

“ _Fuck_ the Carrows,” Megan says, poison in her tone. “It should’ve been me.”

“It shouldn’t have been anyone because the Cruciatus is _illegal_ ,” Hannah says, a little more sharply than she’d intended, because she doesn’t want to admit it but she’s still scared. When Professor Moody, or Crouch, or whoever he was, in their fourth year, had cast the Imperius on her, it had pushed at her entire worldview, the long-held belief she’d had that nobody could ever do that to her. This was a push that was threatening to shatter it completely, because at least that had been in lessons and in the guise of helping her, and this is plain illegal, and terrifying because it breaks one of the first rules of magic she’d ever learnt. Silence falls between them again, and she looks down at her hands.

“I think,” Megan says, a little calmer, “this was just a way to try and punish the loudest people. Neville – yeah, he’s the leader, but there are a bunch of people I know who are involved and weren’t called out today, and a bunch more who weren’t involved at all but still had to stand up. I think they just picked the couple who’re against them the most in public for each house and tried to intimidate them.”

“Do you think it worked?” Ernie asks, and Megan shrugs.

“Maybe for some of them,” she says.

“Well, what I was going to say was that fighting them is the smart thing to do, and it’s the right thing to do as well,” Wayne continues. “But – I don’t want to _fight_. Does that make me a coward?” he asks, with an amount of forthrightness that would have been more surprising to Hannah if she hadn’t shared a Common Room with him for five and a half years.

“No,” she murmurs, and can hear everybody saying the same.

“Just because you don’t want to fight doesn’t make you a coward, not at all,” Megan says. After hesitating for a brief moment, she says, “My role in the DA is mostly behind the scenes as well, with _Current Affairs_.”

“We should sleep on it,” Ernie says, more firmly, and the group nods in agreement before dispersing slowly.

“What do you think, thought?” Susan asks Hannah once the two of them are back in their dorm. Megan tries and fails to pretend that she isn’t listening in avidly.

“I think more time will just get us more scared,” Hannah says, and Susan nods soberly. “I still want to, I think.”

“It seems like the only logical thing to do,” Susan agrees.

“Took you long enough,” Megan says from her bed, where she’s evidently given up pretending not to listen in.

“I know,” Susan says. “It’s not an excuse, but I was scared. I still am,” she adds.

“Everyone’s scared,” Hannah says softly, reaching forward to grip her friends’ hand tightly for a moment.

* * *

“So?” is the first thing Megan says to them the next morning, and when Hannah and Susan do nothing but stare at her sleepily she rolls her eyes. “You’ve slept on it, now what?”

“Slept on it?” asks Hannah, resisting the impulse to turn and look at her pillow before remembering what, exactly, Megan is referring to. “Oh! Oh,” she says. “Ugh, don’t look at me like that, I’m slow in the mornings,” she says defensively, trying to shake the heavy feeling of sleep from her limbs as she sits up. “Susan?”

“Here,” Susan says from the next bed, where she’s awake and staring at the ceiling contemplatively, but Hannah can tell that she’s uneasy from the tapping her fingers against the sheets and nervous wiggling of her toes. When she says, “I still want to,” though, her tone is firm and resolute.

“Oh, good,” Hannah says. “Me too.”

Megan seems to relax, and gives the two of them a small, genuine smile. “Good,” she says. After a pause, she bounces a little on her toes. “Want to go to breakfast?”

“Just give me a sec,” Hannah says, swaying a little when she gets to her feet. “Susan, you coming?”

Susan looks at her for a moment, surprised, and then seems to shake herself and sits up. “Yeah, give me a sec,” she says, just has Hannah had, and reaches under the bed for a school robe.

When they open the door to the kitchens, they are pounced on by Ernie and Wayne. “So?” they both ask, and Hannah has to smile at that.

“We both decided yes,” she says quietly to avoid alarming the other Hufflepuffs, but no matter how quietly she says the words the reality of them sends fear and adrenaline coursing through her veins, a heady mixture of terror and excitement.

“So did we,” Wayne says, jerking his hand to indicate Ernie, “but I still don’t want to fight.”

“And that’s fine,” Megan assures him. “Come on, then,” she says, leading them to the table where the others have started to give them odd looks for their quietly whispering huddle. “I’m starving.” Once they’re settled down, she pushes her food around her plate uneasily before speaking up again. “I’m glad you decided to join,” she says quietly.

“Why?” Ernie asks, arching an eyebrow, and she blushes.

“I know it’s selfish, but – I might have quit if you didn’t,” she says, pushing her toast around her plate. “Knowing what happened to – and I was –”

“If you say responsible I’m going to – do something drastic,” Wayne says in a very non-threatening manner. “It’s not your fault that the Carrows are assholes, and you don’t have to apologise for it. And that’s all we need to say about it,” he adds when Megan opens her mouth. She closes it again, and shoots him a grateful look.

“I’ll take us all up to see him after lessons today,” she promises.

“Are you all still using – uh, the old meeting place?” Hannah asks, belatedly remembering the people around them. Megan nods, and then settles down to eating properly.

* * *

It’s easy to see that it’s not just the students who are affected by the assembly yesterday. The teachers invariably give them the lesson off to practice the practical aspects of different spells, things which certainly would have been assigned as homework in another year. The fact that the students don’t take advantage of this is the biggest sign that something is wrong. In fourth year, Hannah can’t imagine that a practical lesson would have been spent in silence, but this year nobody wants to be the one to break the silence.

“Today you’re going to work in pairs,” Amycus Carrow says, during their last lesson of the day, and smiles at the small shift of confusion that his words cause. He leans back, folds his arms, strangely at ease with them taking their time with this, and that’s how Hannah knows that something is wrong. He has never been at ease with them. “We’re going to be doing practical work on the easiest of the Triad Curses,” he says once everyone is standing in a pair, shifting his wand between his fingers. “The imperius.”

Hannah can hear gasps from around the room, quickly muffled; she thinks that hers might be one of them. Susan, next to her, is standing too still, her face too pale. So far all their work has been theory, and other, minor curses – Hannah thinks she might be ill.

“You all know the theory to it,” Carrow says, and Hannah hates the small smile around his lips more than she’d ever thought it was possible to hate something so small. “Go.”

Hannah turns shakily to Susan, who looks back at her with such an open, stark expression of fear in her eyes that Hannah flinches away from its intensity. She knows that Susan has to be thinking of her family, now; the grandparents she never knew, the uncle, aunt, and cousin that she’d met once, and confided to Hannah that she didn’t remember; the aunt she’d been named after, all of them killed with a different Unforgivable curse. How long would it be before they started working on that one?

“I said _go_!” Carrow barked, and this is enough to spring people into action.

Hannah raises her eyebrows, and Susan shakes her head. Hannah swallows as she raises her wand. “Imperio,” she says weakly, and really isn’t surprised when nothing happens but feels a tidal wave of thankfulness for it anyway. “ _Imperio_ ,” she says again, a little louder, because Carrow is glaring in her direction and the last thing she wants to do is attract his attention. Susan sits down suddenly, like the strings holding her up have been cut, and for one terrifying second Hannah thinks that she’s successfully put her friend under an Unforgivable Curse.

“No,” Carrow snarls, around twenty minutes into the lesson when he’s finally gotten tired of nobody casting the spell correctly, and stalks forward to one of the unfortunate pairs closest to him, where Anthony Goldstein is failing to cast the spell on Michael Corner. He takes out his own wand, and turns to face Anthony. “ _This_ is how you cast an Imperius,” he says, loudly enough that everybody stops their feeble attempts at spellcasting and turns to watch. Hannah doesn’t want to look, but she can’t seem to turn her face away. Susan is still pale. “ _Imperio_ ,” Carrow says; coldly, emotionlessly, and Hannah can see the blood on Michael’s lip from how hard he’s biting it.

Anthony stands up, his face blank and utterly terrifying for it; in the next second, dizzyingly quickly, so sudden that Hannah gasps, his face makes contact with the nearest table with a sickening cracking noise. There are shouts from around the room, surprise and rage that come so quickly nobody can suppress it fast enough. There are tears rolling down Susan’s face, and when Hannah touches her shoulder she jumps so hard that she almost knocks the table over.

“I’m sorry,” Hannah says, withdrawing. “I’m sorry. Susan, hey, it’s –” Hannah cuts herself off, lost for words, because she can’t bring herself to say that it’s okay when everything’s so clearly not.

“Don’t you dare say it’s okay,” Susan says, as though she’s reading Hannah’s mind. “It’s not. It –” she lets out a noise that sounds like a tiny, quiet sob, and Hannah judging by the ache in her chest Hannah suspects that her heart may have twisted in two.

“Let me take him to the Hospital Wing,” Michael says, his arm around Anthony, whose nose is bleeding profusely after its collision with the table. Hannah can only assume that attempts to stifle the flow of blood have failed, and this is a last resort. Her suspicious are proven when Michael adds a “ _please,_ ” to his sentence as Carrow remains unmoved.

“No,” Carrow snaps, turning to face Michael. Hannah loses the rest of the argument as she takes the opportunity of Carrow’s turned back to practically fall on Susan in the name of a hug, and Susan returns it quickly, tightening her arms around Hannah before quickly pushing her away before Carrow can lost interest in arguing with the Ravenclaw boys or turn around.

“S’okay,” Anthony says, his voice a little muffled. “I think it’s stopped.” Hannah returns her focus to them in time to see Michael glare at Carrow, and then drop his gaze, cheeks burning. Anthony’s hands are covered in blood, and Hannah can’t help thinking that soon, that’s what all their hands will look like.

“Well?” Carrow says, turning to face the rest of his pale, wide-eyed class. “Now that you’ve had you demonstration,” he says, his tone changing into something softer and far more threatening, “I hope none of you’ll need another.”

Hannah can barely suppress her shudder as she turns back to Susan. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly, helplessly, and Susan gives her a small, sad smile in response. “ _Imperio_ ,” she says again, and when nothing happens she still can’t help feeling that tidal wave of relief. “ _Imperio. Imperio_ ,” she tries, and Susan just shakes her head.

“Abbott! Macmillan!” Carrow barks from the front, and Hannah can see that same infuriating smile on his face when she jumps and turns to face him. “You have to _mean_ it,” he tells them.

“ _Imperio_ ,” Hannah says again, waving her wand at Susan. She tries to sound as authoritative as possible, but her voice cracks, and the room seems to waver when her eyes fill with tears. She can hear Carrow’s scoff carry to her from the front of the room, but the relief that she feels when he returns to his work is indescribable.

“I’ll try,” Susan says gently, standing up. Hannah sits down, feeling somewhat guiltily that she shouldn’t be as grateful as she is.

When the lesson ends, Hannah had imagined that she’d be relieved about it, but Carrow manages to ruin even that for her when he gets up from his desk to go stand by the door as they begin to file out. “Next lesson, we’ll be continuing this practice,” he says, “and any student who can’t perform the spell will have a detention, so I strongly suggest you practice with each other.”

Susan falls into step with Hannah, and Hannah pulls Megan over from the other side of the line.

Megan is the first one to break the silence. “God, that was awful,” she says, shuddering. Hannah nods, and can see Susan doing the same. Ernie and Wayne join them, both of them clearly stressed; Ernie is smoothing out his robes and tidying his bag almost obsessively, and Wayne is clenching his fists so tightly that his knuckles are white.

“Let’s go,” Ernie says, looking at Megan, who nods and charts a course to the seventh-floor corridor. Hannah had never thought that she would be so fond of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls ballet, but she ducks her head to hide a smile at the sight of it.

The four of them stand back to let Megan pace in front of the wall three times; when the door appears, she grabs it and holds it open for them, and they file in.

“It’s empty,” Susan observes, and almost laughs when Hannah hits her arm for this obvious proclamation.

“He’ll be here soon,” Megan says. “We meet after school most days anyway.”

Sure enough, the door soon opens to admit Michael and Anthony, who’s scrubbed the blood off his hands and face – too roughly, if the redness of his skin is anything to go by – but whose robes and tie are still stained, the blood turning a light brown as it dries. Hannah never wanted to know what blood looked like on someone’s hands, someone’s face; she never needed to know what colour old blood was.

“Oh,” Michael says, stopping short at the sight of them, huddled together. Slowly, he smiles. “Are you joining us, then?” The Hufflepuffs look around, try to ascertain who’s going to answer. In the end, it’s Ernie who does.

“If Neville will have us,” he says, and Michael and Anthony both nod.

“Took you long enough,” Michael remarks, but Anthony elbows him.

“I’m sure he’d be glad to have you,” he says, his voice warm. “I know I’ll be glad for the company. This one gets boring,” he says, indicating Michael, who scoffs and elbows him.

“Michael’s right, though,” Ernie says unexpectedly. “We haven’t been the bravest, this year. It’s not an excuse,” he says, and Hannah is reminded of Susan’s words, last night, and knows what he’s going to say before he actually says, “but we’ve been scared.”

“Nobody faults you for that,” Anthony says. “If you’re not scared in these situations, you’re a fool.”

“It’s what you end up doing that matters,” Michael says, and then continues, seemingly oblivious to the glare his friend sends in his direction, “and you guys seem to be doing the right thing.”

Hannah can’t help but smile at the two, they’re such obviously good friends, and she can feel Susan reaching around Megan to squeeze her wrist, and she has to duck her head in order to hide the ridiculous smile that’s threatening to blossom on her face.

More people start to trickle in the doorway; Padma Patil, her twin, and Lavender Brown, and then all of the other Gryffindors, Neville coming in last and stopping short at the sight of them.

“Megan?” he asks, a little uncertainly.

“We want to join you,” Ernie says, taking the burden of speaking for the group. “We’ve been cowards, or denying things,” he says, and while Wayne and Susan duck their heads, neither of them make a move to contest the claim, “and if you’ll have us, we’d like to join.”

“Of – of course,” Neville says, sounding a little stunned. “It shouldn’t even have to be a question.”

Anthony and Michael both send them grins, and Hannah is a little stunned herself to see the warm looks that the other members are sending them, as opposed to the hostility she’d barely been aware that she was dreading.


End file.
